Mount Logan

Fourteen Days on the World’s Largest Mountain as the Last Team of the Season

Tobias Renggli

The Silence

On June 10, 2026, a tiny plane dropped us off on a glacier in the Yukon. We had around 150 kilograms of gear with us.

The pilot helped us unload, wished us luck, and took off again. He flew over us one more time, then the plane disappeared towards the horizon. A little later, the sound of the engine faded away.

What remained was a kind of silence I had never experienced before.

There were two of us: Heli Hofmann and me. Over the entire season, only 27 people in nine teams had been on Mount Logan. Fewer than half of them reached the summit. We were the last team of the year still planning to try.

At 5,959 metres, Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada and sits in the middle of the largest continuous ice field outside the polar regions. On Denali, we had spent two weeks walking from the road to the mountain. On Logan, that kind of approach was no longer realistic in June.

Reaching the mountain entirely under our own power would have been theoretically possible, but only across enormous distances, major rivers, and with a completely separate time window. After Denali, and with summer already setting in, it was no longer a sensible option.

So we flew into base camp.

The fact that we walked in on Denali but flew in on Logan still sits with me a little. The flight itself, however, was almost impossible to comprehend. Below us were glaciers and ice fields on a scale I had never seen before. Everything was so vast that even Mount Logan did not look especially imposing.

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Too Easy

The first four days almost felt too easy. On Denali, it had taken us 25 days to reach 4,000 metres. On Logan, we were there on day three. The snow was frozen hard, the pulks almost pulled themselves, and we could move most of our gear in a single carry instead of shuttling back and forth several times.

During the day, it was warm enough for a T-shirt. At night, it became bitterly cold. From base camp at 2,700 metres, we moved through Camp 1 at 3,400 metres and up to King’s Col at 4,100 metres.

The landscape was perhaps the most beautiful I had seen up to that point. Massive glaciers broke away beside Camp 2, King Peak rose across from us, seas of clouds stretched below, and above them came sunsets that made the entire sky look as if it were on fire.

On day four, we carried gear up to Camp 3 at 4,850 metres. The route led through an icefall filled with blocks of ice larger than houses. Afterwards, we skied back down to camp. They were the first real ski turns of the entire journey. On Denali, we had never had the chance.

After four days, I thought: three more days of good weather, and we would be on the summit.

Five Days in the Tent

Then the storm arrived. For two days, the wind blew at up to 100 kilometres per hour. On top of that came between half a metre and a metre of fresh snow. Before long, the tent was half buried, while the ground around it had been completely stripped bare in places.

Even going to the toilet became a whole process. Put everything on, go outside, get it over with as quickly as possible, then back into the tent. A small adventure every time.

Two days turned into five. At times, I slept 16 to 18 hours a day, sorted through GoPro footage, wrote long diary entries, and eventually took off my socks for the first time on the entire journey. That was nice.

But the real problem was not the storm. It was the steep slope directly behind our camp. The only route higher crossed it, and now it was loaded with fresh snow.

On day seven, we dug a snow profile. Beneath the fresh snow was a layer of ice, then another thick layer, and only below that the old snow. During the stability test, we could hit it 27 times before anything moved. That was actually a good sign.

We packed our things and were cautiously optimistic. Then Heli took two steps beside the profile. There was a deep whump, and a large section of the slope collapsed. At that point, it was clear we were not going any higher.

Mentally, that was harder than many things on Denali. There, everything had demanded patience from the beginning. Here, it had started fast and easy. Now I just wanted to go down, get back to summer, and get back on the bike. At the same time, a large part of our gear was already up at Camp 3.

Through the Slope

On day ten, we tried again. I was nervous all morning. We went up first without any gear, carrying only avalanche equipment, and searched for a new line farther to the right. There, we dug another snow profile. This time, the snowpack stayed stable even after 30 hits.

Heli climbed up to an ice wall and built an anchor. I followed in his tracks. Through the steepest section, we protected ourselves with snow pickets and ice screws.

Not because that would have stopped an avalanche, but because we hoped it would keep us from being completely swept away if something did release.

It took a long time, but the slope held. At the top, Heli deliberately jumped on the snowpack again to provoke a reaction. Nothing happened. So we descended, packed our gear, and headed back up that same evening at around 7:30. This time with very heavy backpacks.

Higher up, there was another deep whump. The slope stayed in place. A little later, a small avalanche released in the icefall directly in front of Heli and shot into a crevasse. It was not large, but it was fast. We had expected a release there, though, and had the situation under control.

At around 1:30 in the morning, we reached Camp 3 at 4,850 metres. It was minus 22 degrees. Only a small flag was still sticking out of the snow above our gear cache. Everything else had been buried.

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A One-Person Tent

The next day, we climbed over a pass at 5,600 metres and descended onto a huge, gently sloping plateau on the other side.

The snow was so bad that even skiing downhill was exhausting. We had originally planned to descend to 5,100 metres, but stopped at 5,300 instead and pitched the tent there.

We only had Heli’s lightweight tent with us. It weighed around one kilogram, was less than two metres long, and was tight even for one person. With two of us inside, we could barely sit upright. Our breath condensed on the inner wall and froze, so every gust of wind made it snow inside the tent.

I had left my warm sleeping bag farther down. All I had with me was a synthetic bag with a comfort rating of minus five degrees. Not ideal at minus 30 degrees and 5,300 metres.

Still, it was a beautiful evening. The sun set over the ice field, the mountains turned red and orange, and we were convinced we could reach the summit of Mount Logan the next day.

The alarm was set for five.

The Last Summit Day of the Season

On June 20, we set off at around 6:30, just as the first rays of sunlight slowly began to warm us up.

At first, we were going downhill, but it was still hard work. The snow was much deeper than I had expected at that altitude. I had imagined hard, wind-packed ground. Instead, we sank in deeply with every step.

In the basin at around 5,100 metres, we started climbing again, up a steep, wind-scoured slope. We left behind everything we no longer needed. We did not have much water, but it was enough.

Apart from that, the day was calm. That is probably the best thing you can say about a summit day. The sun was out, there was hardly any wind, and it was surprisingly warm. I felt the altitude much less than I had on Denali. At around 5,900 metres, we left the skis behind and put on crampons.

Then, unexpectedly, we reached a narrow ridge that we had not seen on any map or in any photo. The conditions were good, though. Late in the afternoon, we stood on the summit of Mount Logan. 5,959 metres, no wind, and a clear view all the way to the Pacific. An incredible moment. We stayed up there for a long time.

One thought kept running through my head: we were the last team of the season. For around ten months, no one would stand here again.

An incredible feeling.

The Way Back

The way back dragged on. The descent was hard work because of the poor snow. By the time we reached the basin below, I was exhausted, and from there we still had to climb around 500 vertical metres back up to the pass.

The final section was tough, and we were moving slowly. We did not reach our tent at Camp 3 until around two in the morning. The next day, June 21, we descended to base camp. It was the longest day of the year. Our backpacks were so heavy that we had to help each other lift them onto our backs.

Visibility was poor, and the snow was soft and unpredictable. I skied as if I had never learned how. The descent took longer than the climb up. At Camp 2, we loaded everything onto the pulks. On some of the steeper sections, we lowered them down using anchors we built ourselves.

Then the sun began to set. The entire sky turned red and orange, the mountains lit up, and we glided across a vast ice field. Hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, alone and in complete silence. Knowing that we had achieved everything we had come here to achieve. A moment I will never forget.

Even then, I already knew I would miss it. Shortly after midnight, we reached base camp in the setting sun, exactly where we had been dropped off thirteen days earlier. I felt more deeply relaxed, free of stress and worries, than I had in years.

Back

On June 22 at eight in the morning, the plane arrived. Fourteen days. Exactly as long as I had hoped the expedition would take.

Back in Silver City, I was completely overwhelmed and just sat there for a long time. A little later, an aircraft mechanic who happened to hear that we wanted to drive to Haines Junction for food handed us his car keys and the code to his house. He asked us to bring him his forgotten dental retainer and told us to stop at the restaurant on the way.

A few hours earlier, we had still been alone on a glacier. Now we were sitting in a stranger’s car. In Haines Junction, we ordered burgers, Caesar salad, ice cream, and Coke. Absurd.

Denali and Mount Logan in the same season. Before the journey, I had barely dared to imagine that it might really work. And now it was done. A dream come true.

Now it was time for a recovery ride towards Mexico. But that is another story.

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Tobias Renggli is travelling from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Patagonia. 35 countries, 35 highest summits, and around 40,000 kilometres under his own power. Denali was the first.